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Hyunjin Park   
                   

collective works      drawing      about     CV    ︎
                                                                                                                               

Neither Lion, Dog, nor Human
2022 
performance, video


This performance piece involved creating a large costume out of dog hair and a mirror mask. For this work, I reinterpreted a 700-year-old traditional Korean dance known as the “Bongsan Lion Mask Dance.”  In Asia, lion mask dances have been passed down for generations. For this dance, performers operate a large lion mask, mimicking a lion’s movements. This dance developed in Korea, a country where lions have never lived. With attention to this fact, I focused on how this dance can be used to imagine animals that one has never actually seen in person. By drawing on this historical context and imagining my deceased dog as some kind of monster, imaginary animal, or person, this work explores how memories are transmitted and become internalized within the body.

Video link below the page︎︎︎









This work involved two performers of Korean traditional music and two of my peers who, like me, care for elderly dogs. I consider these performers to be people who preserve “memories” through the bodily gestures of traditional dance. Because traditional Korean dance features powerful movements, people often falsely assume that the lion mask dance has been primarily performed by men. For this work, therefore, the two female performers emerge from the hidden space of the giant lion costume, and I transform the fur and costume, which resembles a dog, into a carpet-like object and mirror faces that can be played as a performance place and instruments.




making photo (photo by Sungjun Bang)


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~ Reference ~





“French Poodle” in old encyclopedias (1880s to 1937).
https://poodlemojo.com/history/








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